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The AA Meeting is your weekly destination for all the biggest gaming news of the week.

This week Jamie takes you through the latest gaming news on his lonesome, we hear about Defiance, Puddle and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razors Edge. We also get a first hand look at the Nintendo 3DS Direct, all the gaming announcements, sporting’s annual releases aplenty, Mr. Survival-Horror returns, Wii U missing out on games and what will Criterion do next? Along with more we even have user questions! Got any questions for next episode? Leave them below or email to analogaddiction@hotmail.com. Subscribe to us on iTunes, simply by clicking the logo below.

Jamie Briggs is Australian and has a sexy accent, he also runs Analog Addiction where you can find all his latest reviews, interviews and features and also like them on Facebook. Also follow his daily life on Twitter @AnalogAddiction and his videos on YouTube

Defiance is the latest title developed by Trion Worlds and it brings with it one of the more interesting premises gaming has seen in the modern generation. Defiance is not only an online third person shooter MMO, but also a brand new TV show that debuted on Syfy, April 17, 2013. The premise of both forms of Defiance revolves around a near distant future where a race of aliens called the Votan arrive on Earth; their home world has been destroyed and they are looking for a new home. The TV series and the game itself are meant to connect in ways never seen before.

One of the key elements I have avoided in this ongoing review was the games AI, with combat being the games main focus AI opponents are constantly on your screen. Defiance has some fairly weak AI enemies, now that cat is out of the bag we can explain why. Multiple times you can be right next to an enemy laying waste to them with your weapons and they will not notice until they have been put down, almost all enemy AI has one objective and that is easily explained with one word, shoot.

They will stop and shoot at you in the open, they will stand on towers and shoot, or they will run directly at you and you guessed it, shoot. They are mindless enemies with one task and they only become difficult to handle when the game decides to throw unforgivable odds your way. In small groups you will never find they challenge your skills, but the deeper you go into the games narrative you will get wave after wave of enemies thrown at you, almost small army numbers. Though the variety in enemies was something I appreciated, with almost each Act giving you fresh enemies to fight against, the poor AI never seemed to get any better.

Having spoke about the painful repetition players must face during missions, the multiplayer aspects of Defiance offer a glimmer of hope. When completing main story missions or side quests, you might find players have already started the objective and you are able to team up alongside them to complete the mission. If you so wish you are even able to group with players, allowing your team to share vehicles and their locations always be shown on the map. This works well enough, having grouped up with a handful of different groups during my time in Defiance it definitely makes the monotony more enjoyable.

The cooperative elements of Defiance actually became some of the most enjoyable and memorable moments. Working with others felt better than playing alone, keeping an eye on your team mates to keep them alive, reviving them when they were down and even a celebration dance after a job well down. These are moments that made the game world feel alive, rather than you facing wave after wave of enemies on your own.

These cooperative moments carry over to the Co-Op maps you unlock throughout the games narrative, these maps are basically dungeons four players can work together to defeat. Though these maps never provided a challenging experience, it was fun to ride around with three other players and work towards a collective goal. The bosses in these maps are also interesting, bringing even more diversity to the enemies on offer.

On the other side of the coin Defiance also offers competitive multiplayer, with a major flaw holding the feature back from what it could offer. Personally the multiplayer feels buried, you must enter your normal menu screen, hold down the left trigger, find matchmaking and then go from there. The numbers of people playing the multiplayer are extremely low, which makes me think the fact this multiplayer isn’t the easiest to find, is the reason numbers are so low.

Making matters worse after spending so much time waiting for a full lobby to start a match, the match will be over within five minutes and the multiplayer party broken up, forcing you to wait once again. The waiting for a single Shadow Fall match was horrendous, this match type offers 64 vs. 64 player battles. But after 3 hours of letting my character wait, not once was there enough players to fill the lobby and allow a match to begin.

However the multiplayer is actually quite fun once you are done waiting, bringing a nice challenge compared to the poor AI you become accustomed too. Using your characters powers to their full extend, provides strategy that isn’t on offer during the main game. Matches take place in small sectioned off maps, with nothing blowing me away in design but they allow for some decent gameplay. It is a shame that the lack of players means enjoying the multiplayer features, involves more waiting than actual gameplay. Could it be that console players just don’t know the multiplayer exists? It’s a genuine argument since the game (once again) fails to inform these features exist. Though we are constantly reminded Co-Op Maps exists players without friends playing Defiance, may choose to ignore them altogether, in-turn missing the multiplayer section.

Defiance is a flawed experience and with that, it becomes hard to recommend. Though there is a ton of content on offer, even for the single player gamer, you must ask yourself if quantity over quality is something you can stomach? Defiance had many chances to become a great experience, but when you spend almost every main missions and side quest repeating the same thing, it becomes nothing more than a monotonous chore.

Unlike most MMO’s the lack of classes and the fact you can respec your character at anytime, holds back the notion of replaying with a new character. There is no reason to start again and grinding for experience with one character is hard enough, let alone multiple characters repeating the same bland mission process.

Overall there is fun to be had with Defiance and I genuinely had a good time during my first 20 hours, but after awhile the problems and lack of variety drain the fun away. What you’re left with is a game that feels rushed, almost as if they had to publish this game before the TV show aired. Even when you find something positive, it won’t be long until the issues once again appear ruining your chance of enjoyment.

Defiance is the latest title developed by Trion Worlds and it brings with it one of the more interesting premises gaming has seen in the modern generation. Defiance is not only an online third person shooter MMO, but also a brand new TV show that debuted on Syfy, April 17, 2013. The premise of both forms of Defiance revolves around a near distant future where a race of aliens called the Votan arrive on Earth; their home world has been destroyed and they are looking for a new home. The TV series and the game itself are meant to connect in ways never seen before.

My time with Defiance has continued and I am now almost at the 40 hour mark, not only that but the main quest storyline is now complete. Defiance‘s story is quite shaky at first, taking a good half a dozen missions before you really understand the games narrative, even then it is still a struggle to comprehend the overall plot. Each mission during the main quest is basically its own story, which is actually a good thing. Sure it eventually all connects together in the greater scheme of things, but these small side-stories allow you to further develop your relationship for the diverse cast of characters.

These characters could have been much stronger if their acting was up to scratch, most lines of dialog feel phoned in and never show much emotion during some of the hectic parts of the games narrative. If the characters showed more emotion, I might be sitting here expressing my love for the cast, but sadly it just wasn’t there. The narrative overall picks up in the final act, introducing a main villain and more interesting enemies to defeat. I found myself reminded of Mass Effect 3‘s climatic battle heading into the final mission, it was able to present the feeling of desperation in the struggle for good and evil. Don’t expect the narrative to blow you away by any means, but there are a ton of missions here to keep you playing for a long time.

The lack of variety during the main-quest missions will grind upon any die-hard MMO fan. As stated in my first impressions piece all missions seemed to involve traveling to a location, battling an incredible number of enemies, hack/capture/pick-up/attach certain options holding the Square button and then defeating more enemies. This mission structure barely ever changed apart from adding even more enemies, which was extremely disappointing. When my first few missions involve defending a helpless NPC, only to have me defending a helpless NPC 35 hours later, its slightly disheartening. One smaller gripe during these missions is directed towards your allies, though you are able to heal them when they go down, your AI friends never once come to your aid. Though many games have showcased NPC’s healing the playable character, Defiance avoids it completely and feels frustrating when the NPC lets you die at their feet.

Defiance has another alternate side-quest narrative, these are called Episode Missions. These missions revolve around the two main characters from the Defiance television show, though you could tell the actors had not voiced video game characters before, these missions were definitely my favourite part of the game. It is a shame they only present a handful of Episode Missions, the narrative given throughout these missions were enjoyable, direct and easily more memorable than the games main quest. I am unsure if more Episode Missions will be presented as the show continues, but as it stands what we are given is cream of the crop in terms of what Defiance can offer.

While I have mentioned the low quality voice acting above, it gets worse for the NPC’s around the world. During dynamic events you might have to rescue a soldier, while fighting enemies the constant repetitive screech of the soldiers while they are tied up is actually horrible. There is one certain character that literally repeated the same thing over 10 times in a row, that I abandoned the mission, maybe I am a bad person? Let’s not forget the gut wrenching sound your character sometimes makes when he re-spawns, it happened plenty of times when the game couldn’t keep up with the fast respawn time. I would die, but when I re-spawned his death noise would sound for all to hear, it is laughably bad.

Sadly, the audio troubles continue throughout gameplay. Defiance‘s gun noises sound like cap-guns, or those toy-guns you can buy for your kids. Vehicle collision noises sound like hitting someone with an inflatable bat, when my vehicle first crashed into a steal railing, I was shocked how they could have placed a noise so far from the actual sound in the finished product.

However it isn’t all bad on the gameplay front, it can be impressive at times to see just how much is going on during battles while the game doesn’t skip a beat. There can be over 15 enemies on screen, all shooting, all moving and the game was able to keep up. Though traveling through the world seemed like a more difficult task, with vast amounts of pop-in. At one stage an entire bridge spawned while I was driving over it, these issues were greatly apparent when you were traveling through the environment at a fast pace.

You know what is the strangest thing after all these issues, I am still having a somewhat enjoyable experience with Defiance. There is no doubt this game has many flaws, many issues and deserved a lot more polish before it was released, but above all these issues I find myself still having fun. I have had long experiences with games where I have found myself bored out of my brain, wanting my experience to end. Yet I only find myself wishing the mission structure would vary enough for some new situations to occur, it is definitely a strong tick in the negative column. But don’t take away the fact that after 35+ hours I am still able to have a good time with Defiance.

That is it for part 3 of my ongoing Defiance Impressions, but we are also closing in on the end of this long journey. In the finale I will talk about the last few aspects of the game I have yet to cover, including my thoughts on the games competitive and cooperative multiplayer.

For more impressions of Defiance, check out part 1 and part 2 of this ongoing review.